University of Ottawa Students for Life promotes the dignity of human life from conception to natural death on our campus.

S.L.E.D. Part 3: Environment

I guess I better continue the SLED series if I want to get it done by the end of the term.

When I travel from place to place, or even room to room, does anything about me change? Or think about yourself: Are you a different person when you enter different surroundings? For some reason, the idea that environment dictates value gets applied to the unborn. In fact, it’s quite extreme: on one side of the birth canal, the unborn child has no rights whatsoever (in Canada), but on the other side the child is a person possessing full rights. So what changed within that child during the birth process? Not much, even though labour is probably very distressing and traumatic for the baby.

“Oh, but the unborn doesn’t even breathe air, like all humans do”, someone might say. Even if this were essential for the right to life, it’s not as if the unborn child is not receiving oxygen. In fact, from the moment of conception, respiration, or air exchange begins to happen. And as the baby develops, he will start to “breathe” amniotic fluid in and out of his lungs, something that would actually kill us! If you wouldn’t survive in the unborn baby’s world, how can you expect the unborn baby to survive in yours?

Some babies are born premature or early. Some are born late. The moment of birth is such an arbitrary moment in time. Just because you can’t see the unborn, doesn’t mean she doesn’t have the right to life.

This argument is another attempt to devalue the life of the unborn child. Again, we see that it simply makes no sense.